Cheaters (40 page)

She pointed at the screen. “Big brother’s watching.”

A red light was still winking at both of us.

Both of us waved, then let out exhausted laughs.

I leaned over and grabbed the edge of the comforter—it had fallen to the floor during our love dance—gripped the rumpled covers, and pulled them over us.

I told her, “Darnell has been seeing Tammy.”

“I already figured that out.”

“When?”

“The night when we read his novel. I remembered how she was all over him at Shelly’s. She said she’d fallen in love with a married man. A writer. I’m no Sherlock, but I’m no nincompoop.”

A beat later I said, “He went to see her today.”

Her jaws tightened. I felt heat rush over her body. She swallowed. Sighed.

I answered what she was thinking, “I hope not.”

Sleep eased into the room, covered us both with serenity.

I’d had a great week with Stephan No Middle Name Mitchell. Monday evening he invited me up the hill, and he made me a seafood pasta. Linguini with smoked salmon and shrimp. The brother can cook, so that gave him some serious brownie points. He’d bought me a Tina McElroy Ansa book as a gift too. Just because. The next night he was at my place eating spaghetti. The next we were at L.A. Fitness gym playing racquetball, again being physical to the point of exhaustion. Outside the club, in the darkness, we became as devious as high schoolers. We kissed out in the parking lot, rubbed our sweaty bodies on each other for over an hour, but we didn’t keep each other company that night. Which was cool, because I wanted him to want me for more than
that
, no matter how bad I wanted
that
from him. The
next day we talked on the phone from work; talked for over two hours. That was so nice. When Friday rolled around, I said that I wasn’t going to see him, that I was going to take some time to myself and read the book he’d given me, just because.

I had bathed, put candles all around the house at sunset, and was relaxing, lying across my goose down comforter in my birthday suit—my favorite way to be when I’m at home—reading
The Hand I Fan With.
And every time the main characters made love, I thought of Stephan. Damn words in the book were so strong my stupid nipples were erect, and it had gotten so hot in here that I had to turn the air on. The physical love they shared was so powerful. It was more than the act of penetration. The desire of wanting to give one’s all was so romantic. I’d always given my all. Too much of me. The next thing I knew, I’d folded the pages, closed my eyes, whispered Stephan’s name as I hoped he could feel my energy, and made love to him in my mind.

He has made me smile for days.

Everything about him was so casual, yet so intense.

I wanted him to come put this fire out, but I didn’t want my flames smoldered with his passion. I had to hear his voice. He wasn’t home so after I savored his outgoing message, I left a nice yadda yadda yadda message.

Then I went back to my book. To nurturing my fire.

Damn. The love I was reading about was so good, I felt like I was suffering some serious envy. I loved pleasure. I loved love, making it and being overwhelmed by the passion. Especially making it when I was deep-deep-deep in it.

But that mental pleasure was all I’d get all weekend.

This is where the shit hit the hand I’d been fanning with.

Saturday, the schizophrenic weather was overcast one moment, then had breaks of sunshine the next. I spent all morning paying my bills, doing laundry, cleaning the cobwebs from the corners of my loft, mopping, vacuuming, cleaning the stove, being more domestic than Hazel. By sundown I’d gotten my nails done, picked up my laundry, called my folks in Europe, had my nap, and was ready to get away with the girls and do some female bonding.

Big mistake. I should’ve kept on reading my novel. Then

I would’ve avoided a wretched catfight. More like a real fight.

It ended up being one of the most atrocious nights in my life.

It was really stupid the way the argument started. I mean, really stupid. It happened so fast that I’m not really sure what happened. But I know why it happened. It was inevitable.

We were all at my condo getting ready to go out. My stereo was turned down low, on KACE, letting DJ Shaina Looks play some slamming oldies and get us in the mood. All of us were laughing, doing our nails, doing the girl talk thing, snacking on low-fat chips, sipping on a little wine. At first we were just going to get diva’d-up and hit Shelly’s, but we decided to break the routine and do something different for a change. Tammy, Karen, and myself, well, all of us were in a hip-hop kinda mood and wanted to get out of the San Gabriel Valley and escape to some place that didn’t have the same old faces, the same old music, some place where the brothers didn’t recognize us before we sashayed in the room.

Tammy suggested, “The peeps from the play are hanging out at the Hollywood Athletic Club. That’s on and popping.”

“Let’s leave early and get a bite to eat first.”

I asked, “Where?”

Karen said, “Anywhere that will have a bunch of good-looking brothers. The melanin-sufficient homo sapiens out this way are tired.”

I agreed. “Ain’t they, though?”

Karen added, “They’d rather go watch pigs race at the county fair than do something meaningful, spiritual, and cultural.”

I said, “Shark Bar always has a room filled with sharks.”

We laughed and got dressed to kill. All of us wore all black. Karen had on a one-button top and long skirt, all silk, shiny, and sexy. Tammy had on dark leggings and a
bad-ass
strapless black corset that pimped out her mega-boobs. She wore a light black jacket on top of the sexy lingerie. Her hair was pulled back, and the diamonds in her ear sparkled like the sun.

I asked her, “Where did you get the new earrings?”

She smiled nervously. “Darnell gave them to me for my birthday.”

Just like me, Karen
tsked
and shook her head. She looked heated, but she didn’t go there. Neither did I.

Anyway, I had on dark hose and a cute-cute Ally McBeal-ish short skirt that hugged the round of my butt.

I looked in my mirror and smiled at what I saw. Loved the sweet and sensuous smell that was coming from my body. I said, “God, I wish Stephan could see me before I went out.”

Tammy adjusted her boobs. “I wish Darnell could see me.”

Karen said, “I wish both of you would shut up and come on.”

We walked out of my crib looking like En Vogue, ready to hit the highway and have a bona fide L.A. night. An evening of hanging out with the plastic and the pretentious bottom feeders.

First we ended up on La Cienega, waiting in a line longer than the ones at Disneyland trying to get into the Shark Bar.

These three brothers in dark suits who looked about as attractive as the Pep Boys came up and tried to get their flirt on. They recognized Tammy from her commercial, but after that I guess they were trying to size us up, see what kind of demigoddesses Karen and I were.

Anyway, by the time we made it inside the maître d’ told us it would take damn near half the night to get a table so we could grub on the seafood and pasta, food we could smell from outside, so we just let the men treat us to a couple of glasses of chablis, and before they could ask for our numbers, we pretended we were going to the ladies’ room to powder our noses and did an exit stage right, headed to the Hollywood Athletic Club.

When we got there. Tammy hung out with her Hollywood friends, so me and Karen made the rounds, strolled by the pool tables, then flounced upstairs to the dance hall.

Ten minutes later, this bourgeois bucktooth brother from Birmingham was following us and trying his best to get his mack on. Karen started being friendly with him. He offered her a glass of wine, she accepted. I turned down the offer

because I had to drive the crew back over forty miles of freeway.

This is where it got blurry.

One second he was talking to Karen; the next he was in my face, in a casual sort of way. At some point he leaned over and asked us where we went to college—which is very unusual for a Hollywood conversation—and without a second thought I told him that I graduated from Cal Poly Pomona.

He took off the jacket to his pinstripe suit and told us that he’d gone to college back at Morehouse, came out here to work on his master’s at UCLA, was in radio, but after that I wasn’t paying attention. If Stephan wasn’t talking to me, then I wasn’t listening. Besides, I was watching Tammy. Her actor friends had her shooting pool while they played drinking games. I thought we partied hard, but that was a wild bunch. She was nursing another glass of wine, looking tipsy as W. C. Fields, getting sillier by the sip.

Anyway, the brother who went to Morehouse smiled toward me and asked, “So, what’s your degree in?”

“Accounting.” I yawned. “I work for Moss Adams.”

“What’s that?”

I proudly said, “One of the largest accounting and consulting firms in the U.S. of A. I’m their double minority.”

We laughed. Mine was that bogus Hollywood chortle.

After that I sort of shifted my body the way a sister does when she’s taking herself out of the conversation.

He turned to Karen. “Let me guess. You’re a double minority at one of the largest accounting firms in the U.S.A. too?”

“Nope. Afraid not. I’m in sales.”

“Ah, marketing.”

She corrected him, “No, sales.”

“Oh, so you must have a B.A. or an M.B.A. from Poly?”

I said, “Karen didn’t go to Poly. She’s in sales.”

He asked Karen, “Where did you go to college?”

She sipped her wine. Swallowed. Finally said, “Riverside.”

He said, “UC at Riverside?”

Her voice changed. “No. Riverside Community College.”

He echoed, “Community college?”

Karen held on to her smile and nodded.

His voice lost its enthusiasm. “Oh, so you have an A.A.”

“If you must know, I don’t have a degree.”

Without thinking, I smiled and threw in, “And Karen’s a secretary too.”

Karen laughed and playfully elbowed me. “I’m an administrative assistant, not a secretary.”

He perked up a bit and asked, “For what company?”

Karen looked at me, then at him, and asked. “Okay, Birmingham, why are you marching all up in my Kool-Aid?”

That pretty much sucked the wind out of his sails. Like a puppy who knew he was about to get kicked, he left.

We stayed at the bar with the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.

I checked my watch and thought about Stephan. With him was where I’d rather be.

Karen downed a glass of wine like it was tap water before she turned and faced me. She had that look that let me know a monsoon was brewing behind her eyes. She spoke over the noise in the room. “You always have to have the spotlight, don’t you?”

I blinked out of my trance. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“What did I do?”

“The same thing you did the night you met Craig. The same thing you did with Stephan. The same thing you always do.”

“What did I do?”

“Always coochie blocking.”

“I do not coochie block.”

“Why is it every time a brother starts talking to me, you ease your way into the conversation?” She shook her head and chuckled. “You just have to step in and steal my thunder every chance you get.”

“What did I do?”

“First you scream that you work for Moss Adams, like somebody really gives a rat’s turd. Then you had to give me a smug look and throw in ‘She’s a secretary’ like my job ain’t nothing.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I was bragging on how hard you work.”

“Bragging? Why did you have to say it like that?”

“What, did I lie?”

“Nobody asked you to be my damn spokesperson.”

I said forget the dumb stuff, left her at the bar, and went to get my dance on. Karen got her boogie on too. I saw her throwing down the alcohol and dancing record after record.

But she wasn’t the only one sipping a little too much of the brew. I’d turned my back, and by the time I found her, Tammy had sipped on one glass of wine too many and was tore up. She was in the ladies’ room in a stall, tossing her cookies.

Tammy choked out, “Damn. I should’ve ate something first.”

“You gonna be okay?”

“Hell no. I’m getting sick. Get me out of here before I embarrass myself.”

So, for us, the party was over. Karen wasn’t ready to go because she’d met some brother, but I told her that we needed to get Tammy out of here. That was why I ended up driving back home with Tammy hanging her head out of the window like a sick puppy.

On the way back home, of course, Karen’s liquor was talking loud and clear, so we did get back into a heated discussion.

“Whew!” Tammy said, and patted her sweaty forehead. “I need some fresh air. Karen, let your window down some more.”

The best I could figure, Karen was still mad because I told the brother she was a secretary, because I’d said I’d graduated from Cal Poly.

Irritated, I demanded to know, “Karen, what exactly is your job title at the DMV?”

“Administrative assistant. I’m not a damn
secretary.
”

“And if you told the truth, with the nonsense work you say they give you, your job is a rung below a real secretary.”

“I’m an administrative assistant.”

Tammy mumbled, “What y’all yelling about?”

I said, “You make it sound like I lied to the bucktoothed brother. You didn’t graduate from RCC, you dropped out—”

“I didn’t drop out. I stopped going.”

“Are we going to Denny’s?” Tammy tried to adjust her body in the back and get comfortable. “I’m too sick to eat.”

“Okay, my bad, you stopped going. Which isn’t the same as dropping out. Fine. But your job isn’t a degreed position.”

“No, I don’t have a degree, but when I feel like it, I’m going back and get my B.S. or B.A. or whatever I want to get.”

I didn’t believe a word. “What does your job position lead to?”

“There’s nothing to get promoted to, unless I leave the DMV.”

“So you have a dead-end job.”

“Why are you so concerned about my damn life?”